The grievously injured children’s anxieties and their parents’ wails mixed outside the critical care areas of SMHS hospital here as doctors struggled to save the lives of four Shopian children.

As eight-year-old Razia was being brought out from the trauma theatre after undergoing a surgery, her face pale and body wrapped in a thick blanket, she attempted to open her eyes as her mother’s wails filled the corridor.

“I am scared mother,” she mumbled as a group of relatives put her on the CT Scan machine.

Mumbling these words again, she closed her eyes, her mother Gulshan screaming and beseeching her to keep talking.

Razia is the younger of the two siblings who were injured at Memender Shopian where a mysterious blast claimed life of a child. The girl, doctors said, had multiple perforations in her intestines and was being kept under observation.

“She is not stable,” a senior surgeon at the hospital said.

Four children, all cousins, were injured at the site Wednesday afternoon. Three of them are battling for life at Srinagar hospitals.

One among them is Razia’s 12-year-old brother, Tahir who has injured both legs and an arm and was shifted to Bone and Joint Hospital in critical condition.

Doctors at the hospital said they were planning to operate upon him but were not able to stabilize him.

“He is collapsing and we are trying to resuscitate him. He is very critical,” medical superintendent the Bone and Joint Hospital said.

Like Tahir, Arsalan was also struggling to survive at surgical ICU of SMHS Hospital.

“Globes of both his eyes have ruptured. He will not be able to see,” a doctor treating him said, adding they were more concerned about saving his life.

“He has multiple shell injuries in his abdomen. We hope he is able to make it.”

“All the children are badly injured. We are doing our best to save them,” medical superintendent SMHS Hospital said.

The children were wounded around midday Wednesday when they were playing outside with a pet monkey, said Gulshan.

“I heard a blast and ran outside to find my children in a pool of blood,” she said crying.

“All my clothes were drenched in blood of my children while we shifted them to this hospital,” the mother of two children broke down saying, her sister-in-law, mother of Arsalan, by her side.

Suhaib, a seven year old who had suffered minor injuries at the blast site said he heard a “loud bang” and saw smoke when a child picked up “some bottle like object”.

“I just started running away,” Suhaib said.

“Then I saw blood coming out of my leg, but did not stop and kept running,” he said, as doctors dressed his wounded leg and his mother kissed his face, unable to control her tears.